Another Year

Slaves of the Roman Empire constructed the coliseum in Rome.

   

It was not exactly a union job.

The owned workforce had no 15 minute coffee breaks or a scheduled lunch.

The slaves most certainly worked on weekends and did not have a 40 work week.

They and their lives were considered worthless.

And yet what struck me as I stood in the great Roman edifice was the utter grandeur and size of the building—and how it still remained. I pondered how many generations of people stood in my very place and saw what I was seeing.

I doubted that an enslaved worker who chiseled and carried stone ever could have imagined that their labor and sacrifice might be appreciated a thousand years later by a tourist like me.

It was and is fascinating to think that those who did not matter created something that did.

A thing of worth was built by the worthless.

It proves every life has significance.

And that is what I try to remember as my birthday comes and goes and I am left with universal existential questions like: Why am I here? And does my life have meaning?

I realize that they are questions that might never be answered in my lifetime.

Clarity from afar cannot be reached when you dwell within a capsule.

And so I can only trust that somehow in some way or ways known or unbeknownst to me, the world is better because of or in spite of me.

 Everything we do---including the mundane, has worth and meaning—even if it takes a thousand years for that worth and meaning to be determined.

     

And so I’ll keep doing what I am doing and think about it all again next August 30^th—when I am another year older and another year wiser.

The Ice Bucket Challenge

One of my dearest friends said not too long ago:

If I drop dead tomorrow I do not want the coroner to find carrot sticks and yogurt in my stomach—I want him to find chocolate cake.

It seemed last week that every other posting on my Facebook newsfeed had a video of a friend or famous person pouring a bucket of ice and water over their head.

It was a challenge—to raise both awareness and funding to cure the disease ALS.

The campaign was ingenious—a brilliant use of social media. The challenge itself required no special skills and the materials to complete the challenge were ubiquitous.

And I suppose the underlying message was that while the challenge-ee experienced momentary discomfort, victims of ALS faced extreme physical discomfort on a daily basis.

 One should be grateful not to have a debilitating disease.

But I would be lying if in watching all those people pour ice and water over their heads there was not a teeny tiny voice whispering  from the back of my head which said Please God I hope no one nominates me.

I really don’t want to douse myself---even for a good cause.

Which is when I came to the conclusion that if I were in charge I would initiate a different kind of challenge: The Chocolate Cake Challenge. I would like to see people eating a nice piece of frosted devil’s food cake on camera because who wouldn’t like to eat a piece of chocolate cake “for charity”? Who wouldn’t want a noble excuse for a decadent task? Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines might even subsidize it—or donate a portion of the profit from the increased sales. Even Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem would have no option but to endorse it.

And the underlying message would be that the experienced pleasure in eating chocolate cake is cause for gratefulness—gratefulness that one is healthy enough to taste and swallow—that life is sweet yet fleeting---and there is glory in the things we take for granted.

I think I just might be on to something.

Marie Antoinette might finally be vindicated for proclaiming Let them eat cake.

And it is from my dearest friend who laughingly wishes a coroner to find chocolate cake in her stomach after her demise that I have learned that moments are momentary—and the only certainty is uncertainty. She wears a bracelet that reads it is what it is. For she lives with challenges of her own—and inspires me to tabulate even the most inconsequential blessing and to shoo away any discomfort that rings my bell for a sojourn visitation.

On Healthcare

“So…have you been particularly stressed or depressed lately?”

It’s the one question that has the potential to set me into a mouth-frothing blood spurting homicidal rage.

Because the intended meaning of the physician’s inquiry is absolutely positively doctorspeak for: Are you sure you are not just making these symptoms up just to get attention?  Are you sure you do not suffer from auto-Munchausen disorder or from bored housewife hypochondria?

The healthcare provider is deflecting blame.

What really is going on here is that the physician either can’t be bothered or is not sharp-minded enough to explore inches beyond a self-serving compartmentalized parochial scope of knowledge.

For all their ego bound intellect, many physicians are mere medical automatons—no more special than an assembly line worker at General Motors.

Thinking is not a requirement in their job description.

The added insult is that by asking the aforementioned question physicians trivialize those who actually do suffer from anxiety and depression—as if anxiety and depression is an illness patients wish for---as if those who are anxiety –filled and/or depressed waved their arms in the air and said Pick me!! Pick me!! when the disease Gods  issued out maladies.

The bottom line is: Unengaged dismissive physicians are nothing that either the democrats or republicans can cure with some legislation.

It’s the lack of health care by health care providers that peeves me—not so much the system itself—even with its own  distinctive flaws.

And despite having all these cogent thoughts surge through my neurons whenever the Are you stressed or depressed question is asked—I never reveal them.

To do so would be self-defeating.

The unengaged dismissive physician will simply check the box that says stressed and depressed if I permit my diatribe to escape—which would be an incorrect diagnosis.

And so I have no resource but to smile, put a muzzle on the sarcasm and say “no—not at all ”--and seek out the rare skilled health care provider who welcomes the opportunity to exercise their brain.

Gaps are Good

My friend Donna came to work one morning and said Ugh it was so embarrassing!

I said Why? What happened now?

She said I was with my mother in the produce aisle at Waldbaums when a 16 year old stockboy who was in the middle of arranging peaches into a pyramid smiled at her and said: Hi--how ya doing?

But instead of answering the young man with the expected answer of Fine thank you; Donna’s mother instead replied with: Just terrible. Last month my husband had a bad cough from a cold and the doctor put him in the hospital. They did some tests but he died 3 days later from complications from lung cancer of all things. And now I am left alone in a big house with all this financial responsibility and…..

It was at this point that Donna pulled her mother away from the poor shell shocked boy and said Mom—Stop!--he doesn’t care.

Flash forward.

I am standing at a wake next to one of my dearest friends when a second removed acquaintance taps her  on the shoulder and inquires How’s your Mom doing?

Without skipping a beat my friend said Fine--thank you for asking.

The second-removed acquaintance added I haven’t seen your Mom in a long time—please send her my regards.

My friend smiled and responded I will.

My friend was not lying. Her mother was fine within the context of recent events. Events—that were of no concern or business of the second-removed acquaintance.

Because there is a firm line between polite conversation and genuine interest. One must always consider the length of the connector before plugging in. Too little information is always  better than too much. Erring  on the side of edited response is always the more benign option.

Gaps are good.

Because as songwriter Jackson Browne correctly observes in a 1974 lyric: Maybe people only ask you how you are doing because it is easier than letting on how little they could care.

Good Fortune

Those who know me well know that episodically my skeletal-muscular system asserts itself.

I am then left to coax it into submission first with drugs and then with movement.

And it was there—in the movement phase that I found myself out and about-ish—taking a walk to limber the formerly squawking body parts.

I reveled in the brilliance of the sun---and the wind temperature and humidity of yesterday’s September-like weather.

I was free—mobile-- drug free yet intoxicated.

I smiled—thinking of my good fortune.

That was until I intersected with Mr. Buzzkill on the corner of Poplar and Tremont: a very very old man with a walker moving at a speed that absolutely positively exceeded my own.

He was smug with accomplishment.

I was resting on the edge of humiliation.

The old bastard was beating me.

My mind (and ego) was frantic.

And then I remembered: the hare never wins the race, the tortoise always does. The very very old man and his walker would only overpower me for a little while—the differential in our ages would eventually determine this race.

I might be losing the sprint, but the marathon was mine.

And so I kept walking—once again intoxicated---into the sun.

Sweet Medicine

I was under the weather—not up to par---feeling not too terrific.

And so shortly after lunch, to promote some self-healing, I went upstairs pulled back the comforter and crawled into bed.

Cosmo, my faithful companion, was befuddled, and sat on the floor staring at me in  a clear attempt  to correctly assess the situation.

Suddenly, I could see that he had gotten an idea.

Cosmo abruptly left my bedroom and came back with his favorite toy in his mouth.

He proceeded to jump on the bed, stared into my eyes, and dropped red ball squarely on my chest. He seemed to say Mommy this will make you feel better.

And then he laid down beside me—his warm body pushed up against mine.

 I indeed  felt better.

Because all dogs intuitively know Love is the best medicine.

Baking Biscotti

It is one of my all-time favorite jokes: 

An elderly Italian man lay dying in his bed. He had only a day or two of life left. But as he contemplated his inevitable demise he was overcome by a magnificent aroma wafting up into his bedroom from the kitchen below. It was the smell of biscotti being baked by his wife of 55 years. Tears streamed down the dying man’s face as he thought If only I could eat one more cookie—I will die a happy man. And so he musters up all his strength and crawls out of bed—then crawls down the stairs---then across the kitchen floor. But just as his hand reaches up to grab a warm biscotti cooling on a baking rack on the kitchen table, his wife of 55 years slaps him on the hand  and says—They are not for you!—they are for the people at your funeral!

And that joke is what came to mind shortly after discovering my great Aunt Zia Giangrasso’s biscotti recipe. I thought about the toil of preparing six pounds of biscotti dough and the time and precision required to evenly bake hundreds upon hundreds of  1 x 3 inch perfectly twisted cookies in an oven with only one rack and without the luxury of a Kitchen Aid food processor equipped with a dough hook or a prepatory kitchen with infinite counter space.

I thought I can barely stand the effort and mess of opening a solitary package of Nestle’s Toll House Chocolate Chip break and bake cookies and arranging 1 x 1 inch squares of prepared dough  on Teflon pans placed in my convection oven which houses 3 cookie sheets at once.

It occurred to me that baking in my great Aunt’s times was a dedicated all-day event—which also was completely labor intensive.

I thought if I was the woman in the joke I would not have merely slapped the dying man’s hand—I would have beaten him unconscious with the weighty wooden rolling pin while saying I have to do all this work just for you!!.

Because for as much as we complain about how hard it is to juggle a career and a household and how we never have enough down time because we are too busy and our lives are too complicated, it pales to the laborious lives of our grandmothers’ generation.

Those women really worked hard.

And their achievements (for the most part) went totally unrewarded and   unrecognized—unless you were fortunate enough to be Betty Crocker.